Because all their plans worked so well before, right?
Covid cases are skyrocketing again. States have no new plans.
State health officials are out of ideas.
They’ve told people to wear masks, socially distance and avoid crowds. They’ve reminded people about the availability of life-saving therapeutics. They’ve pleaded with people to get vaccinated and boosted.
As the latest and most transmissible Covid-19 variant has sent case numbers skyward, with hospitalizations and deaths also rising, the response from state officials has been largely muted, a concession to the reality that their messages rarely resonate and that most people — even, and sometimes especially, politicians — are ready to move on.
Most have moved on. We’re done with masking, which did not stop COVID. More people got it, and more people died, during the era of forced masking. My hypothesis is that all the yammering from the Powers That Be about masks protecting us caused people to get too close to each other, easily spreading Wuhan Flu. Telling people to wear masks, forcing them, blew up social distancing. Therapeutics? They told us they were no good while Trump was President. Vaccinated and boosted? More people died with the vaccines around, and, they do not even know if they work for the new variants. How many times do we see a message “I just got COVID. Thank goodness I’m vaxxed and boosted.” Not exactly a winning message
“When you’ve said the same thing over and over about being vaccinated, being boosted, that if you’re vulnerable and you’re indoors with people who are not part of your household and you can’t distance, you need to wear a mask — I mean, the message hasn’t changed since the very beginning,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, told POLITICO. “But the receptivity to the messaging, I mean, there’s only so much of that people are going to consume, and it becomes a diminishing return at some point, too.”
It doesn’t help because a) COVID exploded even with that strategy, and b) they shouldn’t have forced people to practice this strategy. Might have been more compliance, less resistance. Seriously, they forgot the best advice from early on: avoid physical contact, keep your distance, don’t touch your face, wash your hands a lot, and avoid crowds when possible. People are just tired of the current message, especially when we see celebs and politicians not practicing it.
There are no new plans or bold initiatives on the horizon, officials in 10 states told POLITICO, even as much of the South remains unvaccinated and vaccination uptake among children nationwide is well below what state and federal officials would like. Instead, state and federal strategies for managing 130,000 new daily Covid cases in the U.S. are largely the same as they were for managing 30,000 new daily cases four months ago.
What would Politico MEGAN MESSERLY, KRISTA MAHR and ADAM CANCRYN recommend? They don’t have any, and, if you’re complaining without ideas, you’re whining.
The White House Covid team is exploring whether to permit Americans under 50 to get a second booster shot to provide extra protection over the next few months, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
Permit? It wasn’t that long ago when they were saying everyone should get a booster to the booster after 6 months.
An Axios/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday and taken over the weekend found that only 13 percent of Americans believe the government should be increasing mask mandates and vaccine requirements, down from 21 percent in February.
“Policymakers, politicians are highly attuned to public opinion. And right now the public opinion is that we’re kind of done with this,” said Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “It would take a pretty courageous politician or policymaker to go against that, and there’s not a whole lot of reason to do that right now.”
That 13% are mostly the ones wearing masks everywhere, including their cars. Often with the mask uncovering their nose. The rest of us will not put up with the mandates again.
Read: With COVID Sort Of Raging Again, States Have No New Plans Or Something »
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